Slashdot Mirror
Whose Prior Art Filing Triggered Eolas Reexam?
theodp writes "The Eolas patent case history shows another prior art filing was quietly made ten days before the widely-publicized W3C filing and two weeks before Tim Berner-Lee's reexam request. Now Ray Ozzie speculates the earlier filing was one being floated at the time that was jointly signed by a number of other parties who supported W3C member Dave Raggett's prior art, which Microsoft unsuccessfully tried to use in the $521 million Eolas lawsuit. Ozzie also notes that those involved argued for all to stand solidly behind the Raggett prior art and not cite anything else. So who are these other parties, and was it their filing and lobbying that triggered the Eolas reexam?"
How hard is it to file file art papers with the patent office? Does the patent office charge for these filings? Can anyone do it? Maybe it's time to generate some boilerplate filings and start attacking some of these bogus patents out there.
Very early versions of the tkwww browser supported full-scale applets: tk widgets and tcl scripts embedded in HTML. The feature was removed later due to the obvious security concerns, but nobody else had a real security model at the time, either (sigh, it's always the obvious and easy part that somebody patents). Unfortunately I was unable to contact the original author or locate a sufficiently old tarball of tkwww; but perhaps someone else succeeded in doing so. This was definitely available early enough, '93 or early '94.
Check out the Apostrophe open-source CMS: http://www.apostrophenow.com/
I'm not sure I understand the theory that other prior art would,
apparently, be too confusing for the patent office to handle. It
doesn't sound like the typical lawyer thing to do (which is to use
a shotgun approach). This is weird to me, and I would like to understand.
From what I have seen of this case, it's not entirely clear that Microsoft wanted to win in the first place. Their lawyers seemed to have bungled the original case pretty badly, and by being involved in the re-exam, they can once more attempt to control the outcome (notwithstanding the huge monetary award for Eolas, which of course MicroSoft can write-off easily enough, but which more than likely will get reduced on appeal anyway, like usual.)
Think about it though: what sort of place would Microsoft be in with regards to the anti-trust/browser issue if they could no longer support "open standards" media formats in the browser (not that they couldn't, but they can use this as an excuse not to)? They would end up locking-in websites to support the Microsoft-only formats, and make IE the "browser of record" (If nothing else, the FUD factor would come to bear.)
Everyone seems to hate MicroSoft enough to overlook their apparent incompetence in the courtroom and in the cubicle. Could they really be gaming the system instead? Already they have led to the most obvious prior art going overlooked by the patent office (with the support of even the w3c!). Just why didn't MicroSoft fire their law firm over this?
Or, do you think that it would not be in MicroSoft's character to risk barrels of cash and get involved as an anonymous agent to cause havoc in the open standards battle? (Hmmmmm... maybe he has a point....)
Dunno if this is out on the web, but I googled for it and any site with relevant information was slashdotted before I even posted about this!
The inventor of the Weed Whacker was some lone man somewhere in the US. He patented his device and made a sizeable sum of money from it. Demand was huge, and he just started out.
Well, legend has it Sears made their own weed whacker without obtaining rights to it and sold that to many eager customers who couldn't obtain the original weed whacker. The original inventor sued. Sears tied the case up in the courts until the inventory eventually had to give up because he ran out of money. His income dried up because sears essentially stole his sales.
I welcome corrections to this story, but it's when companies with huge amounts of money can kill lawsuits by making someone else spend what little money they have, that you realize that it's the legal process that is killing patents.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
George Westinghouse wanted to bring electricity to the country. So he hired Nikola Tesla and gave him (and a lot of other people) the money to build the Niagra Falls power plants and the necessary distribution system.
:)
Mr. Westinghouse didn't invent anything, or build anything with his own hands. He provided the money to make it possible.
From the definition of initiative: # [adj] serving to set in motion;
Mr. Westinghouse took initiative to create the power grid by setting in motion (via cash) the people to do so.
Gore did about the same with the internet, but he's a politician not a businessman. Thus, he did it with other people's money, not his own.
(And of the 100s of other people who also voted for it, any and all of those that were convinced to vote for it by Gore ADD to his initiative, they don't take away from it.)
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
oops... check here
No not really, by copyrighting software, your protecting the implimentation of a "method" for 90 years, but others are free to impliment the "method" using original source code, this is reverse-engineering. However with a patent on the "method" is protected for 17 years, so even if the method is reverse-engineered, it's still got protection. Personaly I don't understand why the PTO doesn't require that the un-copyrighted source code needed to implement a method isn't required to be filed; a software prototype or model of the "device or method". That would allow others to patent improvements to the original patent; would that build a fire under developers asses to improve their products!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds